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Making Seamless textures
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- Name: Joe
Making Seamless textures
for this tutorial I'm using Paint.NET along with several of the plugins. I can't remember which plugin was in which pack so you'll need to get several ( You should get them all anyway, their free and very useful). The image I used is a free wallpaper found here. I brought the image into Paint.NET and cropped it down to an area I like toward the upper right hand corner and resized to 512x512. Your crop doesn't have to be exactly square, but try and get it close so there's not too much stretching. Then I duplicated the Layer so I have two to work with. ...
On the bottom layer I used the Seamless Texture Creator plugin from the Effects-Distortions menu, using the Seamless Texture Helper setting. What this does is swap the upper right quarter and the lower left quarter, and the upper left quarter to the lower right quarter. but it leaves an ugly cross in the middle, this is what the top layer is for. On the top layer we'll use the eraser tool around all the edges except in the middle where the cross is. You can erase more or less, the trick is to find areas where the two layers will blend nicely. Finally use the magic wand selection tool to select all the transparent areas, the INVERT your selection, and use the Effects-Selection-Feather Selection plugin. I use the full 10 setting. this will transparent the edges and help it blend nicer. Then flatten and save your Seamless texture. Then we'll need a Heightmap. Start by using the Black and White function in the Adjustments menu, then add a new layer for touch ups. The height map is a depth representation on a greyscale. However darker colors will show up as depth in the wrong area, so we'll use a lighter grey color and paint in those areas, then use Effects-Blurs-Guassian blur and Layer transparency to blend it in.
On the bottom layer I used the Seamless Texture Creator plugin from the Effects-Distortions menu, using the Seamless Texture Helper setting. What this does is swap the upper right quarter and the lower left quarter, and the upper left quarter to the lower right quarter. but it leaves an ugly cross in the middle, this is what the top layer is for. On the top layer we'll use the eraser tool around all the edges except in the middle where the cross is. You can erase more or less, the trick is to find areas where the two layers will blend nicely. Finally use the magic wand selection tool to select all the transparent areas, the INVERT your selection, and use the Effects-Selection-Feather Selection plugin. I use the full 10 setting. this will transparent the edges and help it blend nicer. Then flatten and save your Seamless texture. Then we'll need a Heightmap. Start by using the Black and White function in the Adjustments menu, then add a new layer for touch ups. The height map is a depth representation on a greyscale. However darker colors will show up as depth in the wrong area, so we'll use a lighter grey color and paint in those areas, then use Effects-Blurs-Guassian blur and Layer transparency to blend it in.
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- Name: Joe
Re: Making Seamless textures
Once you have a good height map You can flatten and save that out ....
Then Use any of the Normal Map plugins to make your Normal Map. You may want to play around with the Adjustments-Brightness and Contrast on your Height-Map before using a Normal Map plugin, depending on the Images you use, and you may want to jump into Sandbox and see the outcome of your textures before closing Paint.NET.
I've found as a rule of thumb, Your Normal should look just Opposite of what it will do in a game engine, cracks will look like veigns popping out, and rocks will look like caves.
Here's the final result ....
Then Use any of the Normal Map plugins to make your Normal Map. You may want to play around with the Adjustments-Brightness and Contrast on your Height-Map before using a Normal Map plugin, depending on the Images you use, and you may want to jump into Sandbox and see the outcome of your textures before closing Paint.NET.
I've found as a rule of thumb, Your Normal should look just Opposite of what it will do in a game engine, cracks will look like veigns popping out, and rocks will look like caves.
Here's the final result ....
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- Name: Joe
Re: Making Seamless textures
and here's the textures .... Your welcome to use them any way you like !!
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Re: Making Seamless textures
This is a great tutorial, although I do believe quite a few people here use the GIMP or photoshop. Anyways, maybe you could create a zip file with the image files, along with the require script to load into Sandbox? (I mean a package.cfg). Those are incredible textures you have. Any plans on more?
Also, You wouldn't mind if I added this to the wiki, would you? (the tutorial, I mean)
Also, You wouldn't mind if I added this to the wiki, would you? (the tutorial, I mean)
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- Name: Joe
Re: Making Seamless textures
Yea, go ahead .... I make textures all the time, I'll post a few more
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Re: Making Seamless textures
alright, thanks... I think I might make a GIMP version of this based off of yours... again, would you be OK with that?
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Re: Making Seamless textures
Yes that would be fine .... I'm sure Gimp and Photoshop have similar plug-ins .... I used info from quite a few Photoshop tutorials in Paint.NET
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Re: Making Seamless textures
Good, thanks. I'll be working on that soon.
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Re: Making Seamless textures
Also, there is a textureize plugin for gimp that allows your images to be transferred to a tile-able, seamless texture with a press of a button. I would try it out. It's on source forge somewhere.
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Re: Making Seamless textures
it's actually a native part of gimp now, I believe. Filters->map->make seamless. It's not as good as how justanother1 does it, as it screws up the image badly.
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